Barefoot Beach

by Toby Devens

  “You had no idea?” I motioned for a refill of my wine glass.

  “Not at the time. She played the dutiful wife in public. We made the front page of the Coast Post, a story in the Baltimore Sun, a piece on WJX, the happy couple. Local hero, Silver Star for bravery under fire, back from the war minus a leg, doting wife. She loved people thinking that, loved the press while it lasted, but it was all a sham. The truth was, the marriage was ashes. It was dead cold in that bedroom. Not me. Well, not at first. In the beginning, I was eager, willing, and, I swear to you, Nora, able. But someone tells you what she told me, in some ways that’s worse than any IED. It eats away at you, and after a while . . .” He shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “So now you know.” He scanned my face and asked, “Too much, too soon?”

  “No. I’m glad you trusted me enough to bring me in.”

  “I do. Trust you. I’m beginning to trust myself again too. I got to a point where I decided—you helped me decide—hell no to who she said I was. That’s not me. And I’m tired of being alone in the dark. Tired of stumbling around with all the lights out. Tired of wanting you but hiding out from you. So . . .” He stretched his left leg in front of him and pulled his chinos up from the cuff. “Here I am. No, dammit, my leg is not me. Here it is. In full freakin’ sunlight.”

  I bent over. I felt the smooth space-age silicone and touched the seamless sleeve where the prosthesis met the stump. “It’s a beauty,” I said.

  He laughed. “My shrink got it right. I’ve got a shrink now, by the way, and my appointment was why I missed class Tuesday. I’m two weeks in and last session we talked about you. He said if I told you, you’d say something like that. You really are an amazing woman, Nora.”

  He steered me up then, one finger under my chin and, when I smiled, drew me to him. He kissed me. Hard and soft. I longed to explore other parts of him, hard and soft. Did this mean we were back on track to who knew where, who knew when? All I knew is it was better than it had ever been because there were no secrets between us. After I came up for air I said, “You’re pretty amazing yourself.”

  “I’m working on it. But I’ve got to tell you, it might take time.”

  To that I said what soldiers’ women have been saying since the Trojan War, probably since the first man ever went off to battle. “I’ll wait for you.”

  At the door, Scott gave me a brush of a kiss. “To be continued,” he murmured, though he didn’t say when. His walk down the path was jaunty, which could have been the spring mechanism in the revised prosthetic foot, but I didn’t think so.

  It didn’t take long before I was wishing I could order a new foot for myself. The last one was stuck in my mouth, making it hard to breathe. Seriously, I asked myself, what had I been thinking? As the wine fog cleared, the impact of what I’d just promised hit me. I’d said I’d wait indefinitely for someone I barely knew except by reputation and the first thrilling rush of feeling, which in my experience were never the most reliable measures of anything. I’d just made a promise I wasn’t sure I was ready for, wasn’t sure I could keep.

  As if Scott Goddard hadn’t had enough of broken vows.

  chapter twenty-nine

  I slipped into the director’s reserved last-row center seat for the final few minutes of The King and I. It was closing night, which called for an encore of “Shall We Dance?” and Margo’s traditional thank-you speech that included the crew by name and such notables as Tuckahoe’s mayor (present) and her parents (dead), who would have spun in their graves had they known she was frittering away her life on such stage nonsense. No mention of Pete, sitting up front.

  Only once in my memory had Margo included Pete in one of these closing-night salutes. That was a decade ago, after the run of Damn Yankees. Otherwise she claimed he was a distraction. “Everybody cranes to see him and suddenly it’s all about the Greek Icon and the cast gets lost in the shuffle.” In the interim, his star had faded, so I doubted there would have been a major buzz and she could have thanked a generic husband, but Margo wasn’t inclined to make nice to the Big Cheat these days.

  After the final curtain and a stop at the restroom, I ducked outside for a breath of unconditioned air and was inhaling the intoxicating fragrance of gardenias when Emine’s SUV pulled up, the passenger door flew open, and Merry leapt out.

  She dashed past me, calling on the run, “Hi, Aunt Norrie. Party started yet?”

  “Not yet but about to,” I said.

  “Made it. Yesss!”

  Em flipped on the inside light and waved me over. She zipped down the driver’s-side window and I leaned in.

  “Congratulations.” I hitched my neck toward the stage door. “How’d you manage that?”

  “It was like working out the Treaty of Versailles, but I came up with a compromise. Merry agreed to go to the Iftar, which started at sundown. Adnan agreed that she and I could leave right after dinner before the speeches started.”

  “And everyone was happy?”

  “Of course not. No one was happy. Merry sulked through dinner and hardly touched the food, which she whispered to me was gross. In fact, it was delicious. But she needed a reason to pull a long face.” Em drew her mouth down with two fingers at the edges. “The father and the daughter glared at each other. She complains he disses her. But she disses too. Before dinner, he introduced us to these people he was trying to impress. Erol shook hands. Merry never even smiled.”

  I laughed a little. “Payback is hell.”

  Emine’s kohl-lined eyes flashed. “Payback is not one-sided and it is not over. Adnan is burning up at her. ‘The tree branch should be bent while it is young,’ he tells me. Soon it will be too late to bend her. For this, he brings in someone who will try to break her.”

  “Oh God, oh Em,” I said, not necessarily in that order. “His mother?”

  My friend heaved a giant sigh.

  “He’s sending Merry there?”

  “His first choice, but I wouldn’t allow it. Selda’s coming here. I think Margo would call it caving. But that was my compromise.”

  “Your sacrifice,” I said, remembering her mother-in-law’s last visit.

  “A mother makes sacrifices. Selda will tell you all about hers when she sees you.” Em made a wry face.

  “And when is that?”

  “Adnan was calling her when we left the dinner. But I have a feeling they have talked before. I think he’s been planning this for a while.”

  Suddenly a swell of music followed by a collective whoop of laughter surged from the theater.

  “The party,” I said. “I’m heading in. I’ll keep an eye on Merry.”

  “I hope she has fun, my daughter. If her grandmother has her way—and Selda always does—it will be Merry’s last fun for a long, long time.”

  Everyone was having fun. The set was still up. It would be stripped after the party in a twenty-minute flurry of activity, then stored for possible future use. Margo was seated on King Mongkut’s throne, singing along with the rest to her pianist’s rendition of “There Is Nothing Like a Dame” from South Pacific. Pete, sitting on one of the stools at a makeshift bar, called me over. “Hey, Nora.” He removed a Trader Joe’s shopping bag from the next stool and patted its seat. I popped a Guinness and planted myself.

  “So how are you doing?” He never moved his gaze from his wife.

  “We’re all fine,” I said. “It’s been a busy season so far. Some new sign-ups at the dance studio. Summer people. The weather has been . . .”

  Pete didn’t want to talk about the weather. He cut me off. “Margo told me a while back you and the war hero were seeing each other. That still going strong? Because if not I’ve got someone you might hit it off with. This guy owns the new resort up the coast. Upton Abbey. Name is Max Cassidy.”

  “Right. Margo mentioned him. The gazillionaire.” I didn’t say I’d seen him in action and had been pleasant
ly surprised.

  “Don’t blame him for his money. He came by it honestly. He’s a smart guy, lots of irons in the fire, big giver to charity. No airs. I mentioned you and he’s interested. Can I give him your number? He’s a hot commodity.”

  As if I were a hot commodity, I said, “Let me think about it.”

  Pete gave me a bemused look. “Well, uh, sure. But not too long. I know someone who’d jump at the chance to date him, but if I bump you for Dana, my wife will hand me my head on a platter.”

  “Dana Montagne?”

  “One and the same.”

  Interesting. If he was thinking about fixing the anchorwoman up with Max, where did that leave my Pete-beds-Dana theory? “Hold on,” he was saying, “here comes the gift presentation.”

  Another tradition. After the annual musical, the cast and crew presented Margo with a remembrance gift. She had a collection of these cherished souvenirs. An Empire State Building snow globe for On the Town, a gold baseball charm for Damn Yankees, a merry-go-round music box for Carousel. None of them was outlandishly expensive, but they always evoked genuine feeling. Now Merry walked onstage hugging an elaborately wrapped box while the pianist switched to “The March of the Siamese Children.” Owen, the lead actor, made the speech on behalf of all the Driftwood Players out front and behind the scenes, and with a “We love you, Margo,” he laid the box in her lap. The circle closed around her as she tossed tissue paper. She held up for display a silk robe with the mythical half-man, half-bird Garuda symbol of Thailand embroidered on the back. Stunning, it deserved her gasp. “Wow! Thank you, all. You love me? I love you more!” She meant it.

  As the applause died down, she said, “Okay, people, all hands on deck. Time to—” She never got to finish, as the baritone of Pete Manolis resonated through the theater. “Whoa, Team Driftwood. If I can have your attention for a minute, please.”

  Pete loped to center stage, carrying a small bag he’d taken from the larger one. I knew that logo.

  His speech began with congrats on a great run and segued into Margo’s dedication to the theater dating back to when they first met. “And now we’re celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of her degree in theater arts.” If Margo had arms his length, she would have reached over to strangle him. She didn’t appreciate allusions to the passage of time, especially her time. “As you can see, my lovely wife is still going strong, stronger than ever.” His lovely wife was furiously tapping a foot. “To mark that occasion and to celebrate the success of The King and I, I have a gift for her as well.”

  Pete went to her, took her hand, and tugged her to stand next to him as he removed from the signature Svengali and Trilby Jewelers bag a satin quilted jewelry box. He pressed it into her hand. The circle tightened around them. Margo seemed to weigh the box, and then she raised the lid.

  A bracelet, brushed gold wrought into an Oriental cobra design centered with a ruby the size of a cherry.

  “That’s a Chanthaburi star ruby from Thailand. Violet red with a six-point asterism.” Pete must have memorized Trilby’s description. “Top quality. And the gold’s twenty-two karat. That’s almost pure.” It didn’t sound like bragging, I’d have to argue with Margo later, since I could tell from the set of her jaw, she thought it did. To me it sounded like a man who wanted to score points with his wife, thought she was the best, and wanted her to have the best.

  Margo eyed the bracelet and Pete suspiciously. Merry was the first to kick off the chant, “Try it on, try it on.” Margo slipped the snake of a bracelet onto her sparrow-sized wrist. Perfect fit. She held her arm up so everyone could see it.

  When the oohs and aahs died down, she said, “It’s lovely. Thank you, sweetheart,” in a tone much too flat for at least three carats of gem and twenty-two-karat gold.

  As he picked up on her mood, Pete’s expression became a mudslide of disappointment.

  “You do like it, right? Because it’s one of a kind. Trilby designed it herself.”

  “I do,” Margo said, grinding out the phrase as if she wished she hadn’t said it in the wedding vows twenty-plus years before. She pecked her husband’s cheek with what struck me as a dry dismissal of a kiss. “Here I’m supposed to say, ‘You shouldn’t have,’ right? Well, that ain’t gonna happen.” Now I could see she was playing to the crowd. “Because I’m glad you did.” Which sounded to me like a Noël Coward exit line, witty but lifeless. I didn’t hear the beat of a heart behind it. Still, it drew the laughter she was going for.

  She checked her other wrist, a moon-faced watch with giant numbers that she’d bought for thirty bucks in the Ocean City flea market. “Company, it’s late; we’re running way over time here. So while we still have some willing and able left, let’s get this show on the road. Strike the set.”

  Pete stood, broad shoulders slumped, as Margo bustled off to supervise the deconstruction. Then he walked over to the bar and poured himself a glass of vodka. He carried it as he took the four steps into the orchestra seats and sipped it as he walked up the aisle.

  I took off after him and trotted to keep up. “That was great, Pete. The speech and the gift.”

  “You think so? I think it was a washout.” Sip, swallow, stride.

  “No, really. Margo’s tired; that’s all. It’s always a brutal two weeks when she does the musicals. And you know how she is at closings. She gets something like postpartum depression. Tomorrow she’ll be all smiles and flaunting the bracelet to the world. It’s absolutely stunning.” My thinking cleared to an aha. “You picked it out yourself?”

  He stopped then, at row QQ, and faced me. “You have got to be kidding,” he said. “Ask Margo about my gift history. It’s a running joke between us. But this time, I got smart. I brought along a jewelry maven. Dana.”

  Right, okay . . . so Dana Montagne helped him choose the bracelet. That explained the giddy conspirators. A breath of relief whooshed from me. “Dana Montagne,” I repeated.

  “Yeah, but don’t tell Margo, okay? I’d like her to think I did it on my own. I could use a little spousal-caring credit. Not that she was impressed. Shit, we thought we had a hit on our hands. Something that would knock her on her ass. Obviously it flopped big-time.” He gulped the last inch of vodka. “I just don’t get it.”

  You had to think like Margo to get it, and no one thought like Margo. I had no idea what was fulminating in that bizarrely wired brain of hers, but for Pete’s sake, I was going to find out.

  “What just happened out there?” I asked, grabbing her elbow to slow her down as she sailed past me carrying a bouquet of tools and a roll of duct tape.

  “What?”

  “Your reaction to the bracelet. Your attitude. Pete’s devastated.”

  She whirled on me then, nearly impaling me with a Phillips screwdriver.

  “Poor Pete. Well, fuck him and his bracelet. It’s a guilt gift. I knew it and I wasn’t fooled for a minute. If that devastates him, too bloody bad.”

  “Oh, Margo . . .”

  “Oh, Nora,” she mimicked my exasperation. “That’s the simple explanation. How about the manipulative one? This was a look-how-much-I-love-you-so-how-could-I-possibly-be-bonking-anyone-else gift.”

  “Really, sweetie, you need to see someone.” I’d thought this for the last fifteen years. But she’d been in therapy through adolescence, and in college she’d declared herself finished. “All therapized out,” was the way she put it. Now as an actress and director, she was afraid that a shrink playing around in her head would mess with her creative process.

  “See someone? Like Laura Wasser?” She got a blank stare from me. “Don’t you read the National Enquirer? Not even on the Piggly Wiggly checkout line? Laura is the divorce lawyer to the stars, and if she’s good enough for Britney Spears, she’s good enough for me.”

  “I was thinking someone like Josh.” Not Josh, though; he’d heard too much about Margo from me. “Someone who
specializes in”—time for a splash of cold water—“paranoid fantasies.”

  A stunned silence followed. Then: “That’s what you think, huh? That I’m off the deep end. Let me tell you, I’ve barely navigated the shallows. Secrets swim under the surface, my dear. And not just in spy novels and Lifetime movies. Half the people we know probably lead double lives. Because we don’t really know them. We only think we do.”

  As in Bunny Goddard screwing around in Florida while collecting accolades as the devoted, faithful military wife. Maybe Margo was right.

  She was saying, “Soon, very soon, I’ll haul Pete out of the closet and let him bask in the sunlight of truth. Because the truth—along with a multimillion-dollar divorce settlement—will set him free. And now”—she sniffed—“if you’ll excuse me, I have a fake world to destroy.”

  chapter thirty

  The next Saturday night, and we three—Em, Margo, and I—were huddled like chicks on the corner cushion of an elaborately carved tapestry-upholstered sofa in the Haydars’ apartment above the café. A gilt-framed wedding photo dominated the living room wall across from us. The bride and groom—he in tails, she in beaded white satin—stared with complicated smiles directly into the camera. Selda had pushed for a different girl for her son—by Em’s telling, a scrawny seventeen-year-old with a shadow of a mustache and compliant respect for her elders. Most important: she was from a moneyed family. But for once, Adnan had rebelled. He’d fought on two fronts for Emine. Won over her parents, who detested his family, and went up against his mother, who’d never lost a battle. His eyes in the picture were brazen with victory, and I saw a hint of triumph in the bride’s tipped-up chin too.